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Built by a salon manager who lived the problem.

Vacay exists because approved time off kept getting lost between the request and the schedule. I built the tool I needed to run a 60+ person team across multiple departments, and now any small team can use it.

Roei Cohen, founder of Vacay
Roei Cohen
General Manager, Valery Joseph Salons NYC · Founder of Vacay

Why I built Vacay

I'm the General Manager of Valery Joseph Salons in New York. My team is more than 60 people across stylists, colorists, front desk, and operations. Every one of them needs time off, and every request used to reach me a different way: a text, a form, a quick word in the hallway, a note on a spreadsheet, a reminder the week before.

Approving the request was never the hard part. The hard part was remembering it when I sat down to build the schedule. One approved day that slipped through meant a department was short on a busy Saturday, the team was stretched, and our clients felt it.

I didn't need a complicated HR system. I needed to know who's off before I say yes, and before I build the schedule.

I looked at the options. Most were built for payroll and HR departments, charged per employee, and took hours to set up. None of them answered the one question I had every day: if I approve this, who else from that department is already out?

So I built Vacay. We use it at Valery Joseph Salons every day, and I built it so any small team with departments or shifts can use it the same way.

A few rules Vacay is built on

The schedule comes first

Vacay tells you who's off and when, so you can build a schedule you can trust. It's not a payroll system, and it doesn't try to be one.

See the conflict before you approve

Every request shows who else is off those dates and whether the same department is affected. You decide with the full picture, not from memory.

One flat price, however big your team gets

$10 a month for unlimited employees. Hiring two more people should never raise your software bill.

If your team can send a text, they can use it

Setup takes about 2 minutes. Employees request time off from their own phones in two taps. No training, no IT department.

Your data is yours

Every company's data is kept separate, you can export it at any time, and we never share or sell it.

What Vacay does, and what it doesn't

Vacay does

  • Collect every time-off request in one place
  • Show department conflicts before you approve
  • Keep all approved time off on one calendar for managers
  • Track days taken per employee
  • Send a weekly recap of who's off and what's pending

Vacay doesn't

  • Build shift schedules (it works alongside your scheduler)
  • Book clients (keep using Vagaro or your booking system)
  • Run payroll or manage accruals

Articles by Roei

See Roei's author page or the Vacay blog.

Talk to the person who built it

Questions, feedback, or a feature your team needs? Email me directly. I read every message.

See it for yourself.

Try the full app with sample data, no signup needed.

$10/month flat, unlimited employees. 14-day free trial.